Democratic lawmakers accuse companies of shrinking product sizes while charging consumers the same price
It’s becoming a common experience for Americans going to the grocery store: your bag of chips seems lighter, your favorite drink comes in a slimmer bottle, and you’re running out of laundry detergent more quickly than usual. And yet things are staying the same price.
On Monday two Democratic lawmakers launched an attempt to get to the bottom of the phenomena, accusing three major companies, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills, of shrinking the size of products while charging consumers the same price – a price-gouging practice known as “shrinkflation”.
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“Shrinking the size of a product in order to gouge consumers on the price per ounce is not innovation, it’s exploitation,” Warren and Dean said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this price gouging is a widespread problem, with corporate profits driving over half of inflation.”
On the one hand, I’m in favour of portion sizes getting smaller for junk foods.
On the other hand, I’d prefer to be getting the same amount of stuff each time I buy the same product. I’d rather prices go up instead of things getting stealthily smaller.
The worst is when they use the same packaging, but just have less product. Kraft Dinner/instant Mac & Cheese being a particularly egregious offender…
Seems like there should be some way to tax packaging to combat that crap.